In the conventional art, cable providers, such as Comcast Corporation and Adelphia Communications, and content providers, such as Home Box Office, NBC, Home & Garden Television (“HGTV”), and Warner Bros., can target cable subscribers with certain types of advertising content based upon the cable subscribers' demographic. For example, by creating an advertising “campaign,” a cable provider can specify which zip codes should view a commercial relating to a local business. Similarly, a cable provider can create a campaign that defines at what times during the evening a movie trailer targeting adult viewers should be played.
One limitation of conventional cable systems, however, is that a cable provider typically has multi-vendor on-demand systems and, if a campaign is to be used for each on-demand system, the cable provider must create a separate campaign for each vendor's system. In other words, the cable provider cannot create a single campaign that can be used across multi-vendor systems employed throughout its network.
Another limitation of conventional cable systems is that a content provider cannot create a single campaign for use by multiple cable providers. Since each cable provider typically uses on-demand systems provided by a variety of vendors, the content provider must know which vendors' on-demand systems are used by a particular cable provider and must create a separate campaign for each vendor's on-demand system.
As a result, neither the content providers nor the cable providers have a single unified view of what campaigns have been implemented across the multiple cable providers or across the multi-vendor on-demand systems. Thus, a sales department within a content provider or cable provider that is responsible for selling advertising time cannot easily view the inventory of available advertising time across multi-vendor systems or across cable providers. In addition, the content providers and cable providers cannot easily determine whether advertising content or on-demand content specified in a campaign is available within the network for distribution to cable subscribers.
Consequently, there is a need in the art for a system and method that allows for the creation and management of campaigns independent of the underlying on-demand system or technology. Additionally, there is a need in the art for a system and method that provides a unified view of what campaigns have been implemented across a network of multiple cable providers or across multi-vendor on-demand systems. Finally, there is a need in the art for a system and method that notifies a content provider or a cable provider when targeted material, such as advertising, or on-demand content specified in a campaign is not available for insertion and distribution to cable subscribers.